We present you with a policy proposal that can be used to analyze the costs and benefits schedule of mental health. This should incorporate social costs such as use and abuse of drugs, alcohol, intake of marijuana and cannabis, reduced skills and poor performance at school or workplace. The economic costs would include the costs of going to doctor, the travel cost, the medication cost and the overall treatment costs. This is the area where the mental health nursing and role of government comes in being along with the collaboration with the social workers embedded in the social model of a setup. While drafting out the above proposal, the mix of behavioral economics and health economics branches will overlap. The aspects of proposal should be made totally unbiased and then used to analyze the situation.

The benefits would be difficult to be monetized obviously because they are intangible but they can be valued by assigning arbitrary numbers to the value judgment statements being asked around through survey method. The elicitation of views can then be mapped out through hypothetical situations and responses could vary from most satisfactory to most dissatisfactory.

People can be asked questions such as how they feel after being treated. Also, questions such as how happy or how changed have their lives become after being treated successfully with low or free of cost from a nursing school can yield a hypothetical index of their benefits. For example, a 5.0 on an index would mean that they are indifferent; an index number close to 10 would imply that they are most satisfied, so on and so forth. Similarly, the costs of social costs and economic costs will be calculated and an index derived. If costs are greater than benefits, the policy makers should take immediate notice and focus on reducing the costs of checkup, treatment and travel costs etc. The equilibrium should be attained and people should definitely weigh the benefits of mental health more than the costs that they incur while going through the process of treatment.